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    • ARTD-B225-001 Course Evaluation URL
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      ARTD-B225-001            Dancing Histories           

      Please spend 15 minutes providing candid and thoughtful responses to the questions on this survey. Your answers will be anonymous. The instructor will see the responses only after course grades have been submitted to the Registrar. The college will use the information you provide in the evaluation of faculty members, as well as for evaluating and improving the student experience at the college generally.

    • Descriptive Writing Prompts File PPTX
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      437.9 KB · Uploaded 10/21/20, 11:55
    • Descriptive Writing Excerpt (Post here) Forum
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      Students will focus on writing descriptively about their chosen work, using vivid language, analogies, and poetic images to convey the tone, structure, movement qualities, and overall design of the dance; 500–800 words. As all description is already interpretation, these descriptive passages of writing will reveal how the dance makes meaning as well as what it “looks” like. 

      Each student should read another students’ excerpt and offer them some peer-review feedback. 

      First, carefully read through your assigned passage. You may want to do this twice to really absorb it. 

      Second, highlight words, phrases, or images that are particularly descriptive. You may need to copy and paste them into your comments on the original post. 

      Third, ask for MORE of something in particular: details about music, space, costuming, gesture, emotion or mood, speed, rhythm, or timing? relationships between dancers? more vivid adjectives or adverbs? more action verbs? attention to the dance’s structure? deeper interpretation/analysis of the work or event’s meaning? 

      Students will revise their writing based on this feedback experience for their final version of their descriptive passage.

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    Course Overview

    Dancing Histories/Writing Dance has three overlapping aims: 

    1) to learn about concert dance histories through historical sources, scholarship, and embodiment, 

    2) to understand the processes of historiography, and 

    3) to prepare students to undertake their own historical research and scholarship.

     

    Through critical engagement with concert dance history’s canons, values, and ideological premises, Dancing Histories/Writing Dance emphasizes how history is written, questioned, and rewritten. We will explore a range of concert/art dance genres as they emerged across Europe, the United States, and Japan; these particular sites exemplify how concert dance draws from both Western and non-Western forms and aesthetics, often pointing to larger paradigms of sociocultural and political inequity. 


    Moving from 16th century court ballet through 20th century jazz, modern, and postmodern dance to international “contemporary” stages, assigned material includes book chapters, articles, and essays from the fields of dance and performance studies as well as public-facing dance history podcasts and documentary films. Special attention will be given to how dance histories are entangled within politics of race, gender, sexuality, ableism, and class. In-class discussion, embodied activities, and online discussion boards will support students' critical engagement with assigned materials.

     

    Students will develop an understanding of the significance of source material, the effects of cultural competence and critical bias, and the ways in which the writing of history is a creative, political, and ideological process. In this writing-attentive course, students will develop tools to undertake their own historical investigations, generate a bibliography, an abstract, and write a research paper that investigates a specific work of dance or dance event, situating it within sociocultural and historical contexts by incorporating a variety of primary and secondary material and vivid descriptive/interpretive writing. Students will strengthen their writing via rigorous instructor and peer feedback, multiple drafts, revising of ideas, and attention to organization and style.

     

    Course Objectives (Students will be able to):

     

    •          Conduct historical research via archives, libraries, and their own bodies

    •          Describe dancing vividly and understand description as interpretation

    •          Situate works/events within broader historical, sociocultural, and political contexts

    •          Understand the ideological paradigms inherent in historical claims



    • Syllabus and Course Schedule File DOCX
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      Updated to reflect strike-adjusted assignments and timeline. 

      416.7 KB · Uploaded 12/11/20, 12:28
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    In step with

    Included in this folder are materials available to engage with that are "in step with" the BMC Student Strike. We will be reading, journaling, and reflecting through discussion during our class time sessions. 

    These offerings are intended to support student learning in accord with the BMC Strike and student-led antiracist education. No one will be penalized for not participating. 


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    Free To Dance (2001) 3 part Documentary

    • Free to Dance (2001) Page
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      PBS's Great Performances: Dance In America documentary series Free to Dance (2001) is a three-part documentary that chronicles the crucial role that African-American choreographers and dancers have played in the development of modern dance as an American art form. Tracing this phenomenon against the backdrop of America's social, political, and cultural landscape, the series captures the struggle for artistic freedom and spotlights the genius created by cultural synergy. "Without the African contribution, we would not have had American dance as we know it," says author Katrina Hazzard Donald. "Free To Dance" is a co-production of the American Dance Festival (ADF) and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in association with Thirteen/WNET New York. 

      Madison Davis Lacy is the series producer and director, and Charles L. and Stephanie Reinhart are the executive producers. Fore more information, visit: https://www.thirteen.org/freetodance/. 

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    Topic 1: Introductions & Whose Dance Histories?

    • Introductions Forum
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    • Slides from Wednesday's class File PPTX
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      538.7 KB · Uploaded 09/9/20, 15:49
    • Dance History (Manning 2019) File PDF
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      This chapter by dance historian Susan Manning outlines how Western concert dance history has been conceived over time. Manning highlights two dominant models that have been used to organize dance history: "nation state" and "transnational". This reading introduces the idea of "historiography", defined as the study of historical writing, and provides insight into the larger frameworks that dance historians have employed in their scholarship. 

      608.7 KB · Uploaded 08/19/20, 18:01
    • Dance History Source Materials (Layson 1983) File PDF
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      1.4 MB · Uploaded 08/18/20, 12:38
    • George Graves (2000) Surviving the Silence -optional File PDF
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      8.4 MB · Uploaded 08/18/20, 13:16
    • Historiography, a brief vide-lecture overview URL
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    • Slides from Saturday's class File PPTX
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      820.2 KB · Uploaded 09/12/20, 14:28
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    Topic 2: Research Methods & Jazz Dance Histories

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    Topic 3: European Ballet: Eras and Evolution

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    Topic 4: Early American Art Dance

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    Topic 5: Russian Ballet and German Ausdrucktanz

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    Topic 6: American Modern Dance

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    Topic 7: American Black Dance Traditions

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    Topic 8: American Jazz Dance, Musical Theater, and Ballet

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    Topic 9: Japanese Butoh & Revising Workshop

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    Topic 10: American Postmodern Dance & Writing Workshop

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    Topic 11: Local Dance Histories

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    Topic 12: "Contemporary" Stages

    • Kwan (2017) When is Contemporary Dance? File
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      347.2 KB · Uploaded 08/18/20, 13:12
    • "Contemporary" Forum
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    • Abstracts Assignment
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      An abstract is a “trailer” for a larger written work. Your task is to prepare a 250-500 word (1-2 pages double-spaced) abstract of the final paper you would have written based on your research. Think of it as a proposal or preview of the research topic, main ideas, and your research methods and findings. 


      Key Elements of an Abstract: 

      -create a title that indicates the topic

      -provide pertinent context and background information

      -specify case study and relevant details

      -indicate research methods and methodology (use of source material, choreographic analysis, any academic disciplines or theoretical lenses you are drawing on in your scholarly literature) 

      -include a thesis statement if possible


      Example Below: 

      “Something’s Coming, Something Good”: Universalism, Colorblindness, and the Los Angeles Commercial Dance Industry

      According to an oft-recounted apocryphal story, the creators of West Side Story changed the musical’s original catalytic rivalry from Catholics versus Jews to Puerto Ricans versus “white” second-generation immigrants upon reading a Los Angeles Times article about gang violence between white and Mexican youth in LA as they relaxed poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel (Acedevo-Muñoz 2013; Berson 2011; Negrón-Muntaner 2000). The translocal histories and parahistories of West Side Story continued throughout the latter half of the twentieth century (Herrera 2012). Despite its iconic setting in urban New York City, West Side Story was primarily filmed on the soundstages of Samuel Goldwyn studios in Hollywood. Moreover, multiple dancers involved either in the 1957 Broadway musical and 1961 film were generative forces behind the scenes in the entertainment industry on the west coast during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. 

      This presentation explores the influence of West Side Story on the Los Angeles commercial dance industry via a choreographic genealogy that includes Jerome Robbins, Peter Gennaro, Donald McKayle, David Winters, Michael Bennett, Andre Tayir, Jaime Rogers, Bob Banas, Anita Mann, and Toni Basil. Through an examination of subsequent television programs, musical films, music videos, and commercials, I argue that West Side Story’s racial politics and danced ideologies laid the groundwork for the racial idealism and colorblindness ubiquitous in commercial dance entertainment from the 1960s to today. By foregrounding the voices and perspectives of these dancer/choreographers and exploring how they grappled with racial politics and racialized dancing in their subsequent work, this paper contributes to my larger project on the sociocultural history of the U.S. commercial dance industry.